It’s not unusual for a high growth business to see drift in execution.
The team just starts to slow down a little bit; things aren’t getting done as quickly or as effectively, as they are trying to keep up with all the growth and the demands thereof.
So if you’re in a high growth business, I’m going to share with you a strategy on how to get your execution back on track and moving your business forward through periods of high growth.
How do you know if you’re suffering from execution drift or slip?
Well, generally you’re finding yourself focusing more and more on the day-to-day weeds, the problem solving, the issue resolution and not focusing on the strategic and this can happen quickly. You’re in a high growth mode and all of a sudden you get inundated with “issues”.
It can happen slowly when you’re growing a little bit more moderately, but generally what happens is the business on some level can’t keep up with the volume that you’re trying to push through it.
It could be that you need more people and you can’t find them, right?
So you’ve got a people-quantity issue. It could be that your people haven’t grown professionally, and now you have a people-quality issue.
It could be your processes and systems and technology can’t keep up with the volume that you’re trying to push through them as well – the increased volume on an infrastructure that wasn’t designed to handle it.
So how do we resolve this?
How do we get you out of the weeds and be able to focus on the strategic?
Well, as you get busier and busier and things start to slide, you’re going to end up compensating more and more for your team. You’re going to get pulled into some of this problem solving, dealing with irate customers, things like that.
And you have to recognize that’s not going to go away, right away. You’re going to have some more upset customers, you could have some more missed orders, whatever the case is, as you’re getting these things resolved.
But you must commit to allocating time for yourself and your leadership team to strategize and plan how you’re going to resolve the top issues that you’ve got in the business.
I see business owners go weeks and months running full tilt, without taking the time to solve “issues”. And it just gets worse and worse and more and more difficult to resolve.
So we have to recognize, “yeah, some balls are going to get dropped as we stop and take the time to strategize.”
I encourage you to meet with your leadership team, and allocate a few hours once a week to strategize on:
- What are we going to do?
- Who’s going to do it?
- What resources do we need to get our top priority issues resolved?”
And then have a daily huddle, check in with each other:
- How are we making out on this top priority?
- Are we making progress?
- Are we getting stuck?
- Do we need additional resources?”
Put your heads together and make sure that you’re taking action on a daily basis towards that which is most important and pressing in the business.
When you are working on that, although the balls are going to be dropping all around you until you get the issues resolved, you’re actually going to have a long range benefit from the effort. You’re not going to have those issues continuing. You’re going to have those “issues” one by one, solved.
Then you move on to your next priority, and continue to execute until you’ve got your major issues resolved.
And then what we want to do is make sure we’re looking ahead, saying:
“Okay, based on the growth trajectory we’re on:
- What else might break in the business?
- Who else might break?
- Who else might we need?
- What technology might we need if we’re 30% bigger next year?
We have to have that long range vision so we don’t get stuck into the weeds again.
So if you’re having any issues with your business, keeping up with your high volume, I’m happy to have a conversation with you, share some other strategies as well to help you get on top of things and get the business back on track.
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